These stories about unreleased Apple products always make me laugh. It's rumored Apple stops working on something they were rumored to be working on.
Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#32This is only semi related but I wonder what will happen to these huge hierarchical orgs when the pace of software development improves by 10-20x thanks to LLMs. How will these risk averse slow moving teams with a ton of process keep up with 100x more tiny teams of engineers who can ship whole features in days instead of months.
When one bottleneck is removed, that usually means the rate of change is bottlenecked somewhere else. Maybe in the release process, or testing? Or maybe the bottleneck is the willingness of customers to try new things? Risk-adverse customers will often avoid startups. Showing yourself to be trustworthy isn’t purely about the rate of feature development. If the other bottlenecks can’t be removed easily, instead of 10x…
Yes for sure, but from what I've seen at large companies the bottlenecks are already usually caused by intra team conflicts, legal hurdles and "processes" that take something that would have taken a dev with ownership 1-2 days to do and turns it into months long slogs and rituals.
Having worked at early stage startups and mid sized companies there's already a 10-20x productivity gap between them due to this (even on brand new projects at large companies vs startups, where it's not an issue of legacy code).
As an example I just witnessed a large co hire a consulting company to help them "ideate" on a RAG app that barely worked and required 3 rewrites and ~18 months to make it to POC stage, even though a front end dev had a better working POC that he hacked together in a day and a half.
I've heard way worse horror stories from friends at Google / Meta / Apple.
What will happen when tiny startups of 3-8 people get 5-20x more productive and can ship new stuff daily?
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#33This is only semi related but I wonder what will happen to these huge hierarchical orgs when the pace of software development improves by 10-20x thanks to LLMs. How will these risk averse slow moving teams with a ton of process keep up with 100x more tiny teams of engineers who can ship whole features in days instead of months.
You don't have to worry, it's not going to happen. LLMs does/will make individuals more efficient, therefore, reducing number of developers maybe, but you will still have the exact same bottlenecks at the exact same places throttling the delivery speed.
I'm saying there will be 10-100x more small dev shops competing with the big cos. Pizza sized teams that own the whole product and can just ship stuff without the dog and pony show that's common at larger orgs.
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#34I feel like whenever the topic of AR glasses come up, these large companies focus too much on cameras. When really, I'd be happy with just a persistent display that can be in my field of vision. A clock, notifications, maybe a map if I'm walking. I've been using the Viture One glasses as an external monitor and they've been great for privacy in public places. You definitely can't walk around with them since the inter…
The cameras are needed for inside-out positioning.
Now...outward facing screens displaying my face? Billet Aluminum frame?
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#35I love my Vision Pro, but I do feel like it's quite heavy and delicate for every day, general use. Also, one thing that I have to keep in mind when using it is that the room needs to stay very well lit. Something I don't need to even think about with my phone, laptop etc.
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to worry, it's not going to happen. LLMs does/will make individuals more efficient, therefore, reducing number of developers maybe, but you will still have the exact same bottlenecks at the exact same places throttling the delivery speed.
I'm saying there will be 10-100x more small dev shops competing with the big cos. Pizza sized teams that own the whole product and can just ship stuff without the dog and pony show that's common at larger orgs.
These still exist and don't make a dent in the big cos balance sheets. They may be growing the pie though.
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#37Apple reshuffles internal programs and product roadmaps all the time. Just because a program with an internal codename gets terminated doesn't mean there aren't a bunch of other initiatives in related spaces going on. And the work on the core technologies certainly doesn't end. There's no product until there are boxes piling up in warehouses, getting ready to be shipped. If only we could stop giving attention to thes…
It's idle fantasy speculation...like reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics as a kid (with a similar hit rate on speculative future stuff...)
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#38Apple reshuffles internal programs and product roadmaps all the time. Just because a program with an internal codename gets terminated doesn't mean there aren't a bunch of other initiatives in related spaces going on. And the work on the core technologies certainly doesn't end. There's no product until there are boxes piling up in warehouses, getting ready to be shipped. If only we could stop giving attention to thes…
VR/AR gets attention as despite the investment levels, adoption has been mixed. Provided a bug tech co has a “next” offering, this is fine for startups. It pays to be a risk taker on a new platform.
If big tech decides that VR/AR is not worth the investment any longer, then its tough to be a startup in this space. Hence tracking apple rumors is a way to get a read on where the market is heading.
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
When one bottleneck is removed, that usually means the rate of change is bottlenecked somewhere else. Maybe in the release process, or testing? Or maybe the bottleneck is the willingness of customers to try new things? Risk-adverse customers will often avoid startups. Showing yourself to be trustworthy isn’t purely about the rate of feature development. If the other bottlenecks can’t be removed easily, instead of 10x…
Yes for sure, but from what I've seen at large companies the bottlenecks are already usually caused by intra team conflicts, legal hurdles and "processes" that take something that would have taken a dev with ownership 1-2 days to do and turns it into months long slogs and rituals. Having worked at early stage startups and mid sized companies there's already a 10-20x productivity gap between them due to this (even on…
> What will happen when tiny startups of 3-8 people get 5-20x more productive and can ship new stuff daily?
The answer is in the comment you just wrote.
If those tiny startups are successful, they will become the next bloated large companies where things take forever because of "intra team conflicts, legal hurdles and processes", which are categories of things LLMs will never solve because LLMs can't solve problems of human consensus.
If those startups aren't successful, they will run out of money and die.
Big companies take forever to do things because they have lots of paying customers to keep happy, a bunch of people who are ready to sue them at the slightest misstep, thousands of employees with families who want job stability and therefore don't want to be betting the farm every 6 months, etc.
Tiny companies can iterate really fast because they have none of this.
LLMs don't change anything about this fundamental reality.
Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
#40I feel like whenever the topic of AR glasses come up, these large companies focus too much on cameras. When really, I'd be happy with just a persistent display that can be in my field of vision. A clock, notifications, maybe a map if I'm walking. I've been using the Viture One glasses as an external monitor and they've been great for privacy in public places. You definitely can't walk around with them since the inter…
The cameras are needed for inside-out positioning. Now...outward facing screens displaying my face? Billet Aluminum frame?
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